Reid eyes a bank shot to victory

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been hammered for months from the left and right, with prognosticators in both parties predicting that Nevada voters will send him packing come November.

But Reid, his reelection team and some Senate Democratic insiders are eyeing a bank shot to victory — one that involves enough voters picking third-party candidates or even “none of the above” to let Reid win reelection with less than 50 percent of the vote.

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Reid trails former Nevada Republican Party Chairwoman Sue Lowden by 8 percentage points in a head-to-head matchup, according to a poll released Sunday by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. That poll shows Reid tied with businessman Danny Tarkanian. The newspaper didn’t test Reid against former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, but she was beating him by 11 percentage points in the most recent Rasmussen Reports survey.

Yet the Review-Journal poll — like others in this race — fails to factor in the full multicandidate field. It also does not account for Nevadans’ ability to cast their vote for “none of these candidates.” According to Reid and his aides, the Nevada Democrat’s own internal polls show him winning that more complicated race.

“If the election were held today, I’d win,” Reid confidently told a Nevada newspaper last week as he formally launched his reelection campaign. “Do the math.”

In addition to Reid and the Republican nominee, this year’s Nevada Senate race will include a tea party candidate, four candidates with no party affiliation and a candidate from the Independent American Party, a right-wing party that has more than 57,000 registered voters in the Silver State.

Reid’s assessment of the race is also based on his own electoral history. In each of his four previous Senate races, third-party candidates and “none of these candidates” combined won at least 4 percent of the overall vote, with the total reaching nearly 8 percent in Reid’s 1992 race against Republican Demar Dahl.

With voters sour on both political parties, third-party candidates could be in a position to garner even more votes than usual this year. The “none of these candidates” option could pull in an unusual level of support as well.

“He’s confident he’s going to win because he is,” said Reid campaign manager Brandon Hall. “It will be a hard-fought campaign, but this race is, in fact, very different than what the public polls reflect and the pundits are spinning.”

Asked about the impact of third parties in Nevada, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn of Texastold POLITICO recently: “The problem with the third parties is that they tend to result in the most liberal candidate — namely, the Democrat — getting elected.”